I was listening to a tape of old music and remembering people. There are some people you may not have seen for a long time, but it's still within the realm of possibility that you'll see them again one day. And then there are people you will probably never see again, barring a strange twist of fate (and one shouldn't really bar those; they do happen). You just remember them and the past, and the past feels as alien and familiar as a dream from long ago.

Sometimes I wonder about people with such intensity that I dream about them. I dreamed my high-school friend Tammy Van Ryn a whole future. She is a microbiologist and works six months of the year in Europe and the rest in the United States, and she's married. Not really--that's the dream I had, though.

What about Cathy Parsons? Her older brother was in my grade and loved ham radio, and her next brother was the grade below and was a fantastic artist, and she was the grade below that, and had guinea pigs and parakeets. She was a great friend. I think of her whenever I look at our guinea pigs, and I wonder what she's doing now. If she was a great friend, how did I fail to stay in touch? 悪かった。。。

And Michael Doyle, the dungeon master. Such a friendly, imaginative guy. So nice, and actually cute, though he had arthritis or something. I was so nervous about boys, though, back then. It made me standoffish and probably kind of mean. Sigh. I hope not too mean.

And there are others, but those are the main ones my thoughts are lingering on right now.

Never mind memory palaces, there's a small house by a beach, and I see these people are there. I am going to go have a chat with them in that nostalgia house.

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ah I wonder about a lot of people. Then there was a highschool reunion but I wasn't too well to go. I keep a couple people from then and some on internet, sometimes you can find people on classmates.com but they charge for getting email or something. I never paid but others contacted me sometimes.

I was too shy to go to mine, and I even signed up to go. But the people I wonder about were all either older than I was or younger, and anyway, they wouldn't go to something like a high school reunion.

Tee hee--rabies! Laughing w/a little fear in my voice because rabies is one of my childhood nightmares. Rabies and leprosy.

Sounds like the Australian high school experience is much like the American one in terms of alienation. I survived because I had my crisis experiences in middle school. By the time I got to high school, my peers had decided I was really an alien and so just let me be in peace--they ignored me and I didn't ever try to penetrate their incomprehensible cliques.

Never mind memory palaces, there's a small house by a beach, and I see these people are there. I am going to go have a chat with them in that nostalgia house.

Now, what a cool concept! I've never heard of memory palaces but if it is what I think it is, I love it. I'm with you...go to the beach cabin, let in the fresh air and catch up with them there. :)

I, too, wonder about people. Even people I didn't particularly like! So if we do it, then you know someone is "I wonder what happened to" YOU, too. Which makes it even more interesting. Can't help but wonder if you are wondering at the same time, hmmm.

Can I got to the memory beach cabin? I want to see how Michael Doyle turned out. :)

Sure, I would love you to come. It's like a place in a dream, where all sorts of people show up.

Strange to think of other people wondering about me, the way I wonder about them... reminds me of an idea for a story I once had (but it's not unique to me... other people have probably written stories on this idea)--a person in a dream who escapes from the dream and wants to have a real, independent existence. Who at first doesn't even know or believe that s/he's really a dream person, not a "real" person.

That blows my mind. About a year ago or so I can to the horrifying (yet oddly comforting) conclusion that life is pretty much nothing but perception. Your perception, my perception, it's all unique and very few actual FACTS exist, if any do at all.

So what if we are all dream people not yet aware of our "realness"? And how would that make it any less real if we aren't aware of it?

I dreamed I was at the place where I used to work, but maybe because I was close to waking, I got to thinking, this doesn't seem right... maybe this is a dream. But it still seemed really real, you know, like reality, even though it was, in fact, a dream. So I said to a friend of mine who worked there, "If this is a dream, I should be able to put my hand through the wall." And then I did. It was the weirdest thing. It was like, all right then. This *is** a dream. But I felt bad, because I knew that I was going to be able to wake up into reality, but my friend was still going to be in the dream. Well, the version of her in my dream, anyway. The real her was probably asleep at the time, dreaming her own dreams.

And then I got to thinking... what if I could will myself awake from real life? Would I leave all of this reality behind? Not ready for that just yet.